CERTAINTY

European IST, FP7, 2011-2013

Introduction

The goal of CERTAINTY is to be a key enabler of the certification process for mixed criticality embedded systems featuring functions dependent on information of varying confidence. Existing certification methods and tools do not properly address mixed criticality system “composition” and require a new approach to enable heterogeneous system layout while addressing changing resource availability.

CERTAINTY will introduce a disruptive methodology for the design of complex critical applications allowing safety and time criticality aspects composition, taking into account disturbances as elements of the problem space, identifying analysis methods and techniques supporting this new approach and demonstrate the applicability of these techniques through meaningful examples of complex control functions.

Objectives

The key objective of CERTAINTY is to push forward the certification of real-time mixed critical embedded systems, a process currently challenged by the choices made at application design time about reliability and disturbances handling which deals with the management of interferences between different functions of complex control software over the whole system.

More specifically, from a research and technological perspective CERTAINTY will address the following objectives:

To extend modelling languages semantics: CERTAINTY will advance the
state of the art by handling criticality levels, composability and compositionality capabilities as properties at a functional description level.

To support heterogeneous criticality handling at application design level:
CERTAINTY will advance the state of the art by associating behavioural properties able to cope with internal or external disturbances. This will provide designers and developers with the capability to detect early the level of hazards associated with the system, as there is an explicit correlation between their severity and the certification to which the system will be subjected.

To redefine the way that designers interact with criticality requirements
and application behavioural monitoring: by redefining the way that designers interact with criticality requirements and application behavioural monitoring. CERTAINTY will advance the state of the art by supporting requirements capture, often considered by avionics developers as the most important technical activity, responsible for the specifications of resulting systems, having to describe normal and abnormal operations, performance, safety,
functional testing, training and maintenance procedures.

To experiment and validate the new approach, considering examples that
are demanding in terms of complexity in design and efficiency in certification.